Honest question. Do you think the GNOME project is as healthy today as it was, say, 4 years ago? Benjamin Otte explains that no, it isn't. GNOME lacks developers, goals, mindshare and users. The situation as he describes it, is a lot more dire than I personally thought.

Maybe it has been designed with non technical users in mind, but it's perfectly usable by professionals with the right customizations.

Sure, they could have made it much easier to tinker with out-of-the-box by including more options and tools, but I personally find that I need to tinker with any desktop before it behaves like I want it to.